RavenStag

And it hadn't always been the case, but Jack and Robby hung out outside of work these days. They were past just colleagues. Jack was pretty sure that they'd even progressed beyond work friends to being friend friends. They grabbed beers at McConnell's, they traded off watching games at one another's places, they'd gone to listen to a few bands at that new PittFest thing that seemed to have been successful enough to turn into an annual event. Robby had even volunteered to help Jack when he decided on a whim to repaint his living room, and had navigated the hell that was a suburban hardware store on a weekend morning with him. That was real friends, Jack thought; that was buddies.

But in all the days—weeks—months—that they'd been friends, never once had Robby said, yeah, finishing up early today for my birthday. Or, grabbing some drinks with friends this weekend for my birthday, you want to come with? Or, yeah, that's why being a leap year birthday kid sucked. Never even dropped a hint as to what season his birthday fell in.

Jack leaned against one of the work terminals, and ate his slice of Adamson's birthday cake, and considered this. It was of course possible that Robby had said something and Jack had just forgotten it, but he didn't think so. Robby had always been a bit of an attention-grabber for Jack, even back when he'd first arrived and Robby had made it silently, painfully clear that he thought that anyone who didn't come up through the ranks here had to prove their worth. Jack remembered all the things he learned about Robby.

Plus, while Jack didn't know Janey super well, she seemed nice. Last Thanksgiving—his first without Tanya—she and Robby had insisted that Jack join them and her family for dinner. She'd been in her element cooking, baking, making sure everyone's glass was topped up; when he'd thanked her at the end of the evening, she'd assured him that she loved hosting people, the more the merrier. If Robby wanted a slap-up meal or a festive cake, Janey seemed capable of providing either. And at this point, Jack was pretty sure that if Janey was throwing any kind of birthday dinners for Robby that he'd be invited.

But no dinners, no parties, no cakes. No Robby taking the same weekend off three years in a row, which would at least give you a probability to work with.

Chances were good, Jack thought as he dropped his now-empty plate into the trash, that Robby was one of those people who wasn't just unfussed about his birthday, he very much didn't do birthdays. And Jack could allow that there were good reasons for someone to Not Do birthdays—maybe celebrating birthdays went against your religion; maybe when you were a kid a birthday clown had slaughtered your entire family in front of your eyes; you could never know someone else's struggle—Jack had the suspicion that Robby had no overt reason to gloss over his own birthday other than his fundamental, stubborn Robbyness. Robby clearly felt that he had to be the kind of person who Didn't Do Birthdays.

And fuck that, Jack thought. Life was short. Why let stubbornness get in the way of delicious baked goods?

Jack ambled down the back hallway to Adamson's office, and found him sitting at his desk and frowning at something on his computer screen. Next to him was a half-eaten paper plate of cake, and the small party hat that Lena had made him wear while everyone warbled their way through 'Happy Birthday.' Jack rapped gently on the door frame, and when Adamson looked up, said, "Many happy returns. You want me to sing 'Hail to the Chief' or something?"

"I thought only good things were supposed to happen to me today," Adamson said dryly, looking at Jack over the tops of his glasses.

"Ouch," Jack said, and pressed the heel of his hand to his chest. "Touché. Question: when is Robby's birthday?"

If Adamson found it strange that one of his attendings would stop by his office an hour into the shift to ask when another attendings' birthday was, he didn't pass comment on it. "June 4."

Five days from today.

"Cool," Jack said, and got back to work.

A younger Jack would have schemed about throwing Robby some kind of surprise party: one with cake and booze and a kick-ass playlist. A much younger Jack would have thrown him one with cake and booze and a stripper, because boobs were awesome and because much younger Jack had been a little asshole who thought that making it through basic training meant that no one else could tell him shit. The Jack of 2019 understood that a full-on party was not the way to go with Michael Robinavitch, plus or minus anyone's boobs. His instincts suggested something else.

Robby's birthday fell on a Tuesday. He wasn't rostered to work, and so Jack gambled that around about nine, he'd find Robby doing his fine-weather, day-off usual: sitting out on his porch with a cup of coffee, lingering in the quiet with Jake gone to school and Janey at the office. And at 9:05, Jack rocked up to find that his gamble had paid off. There was Robby, long legs folded up to let him perch in one of the Adirondack chairs, his bedhead all wild and a thick paperback in his lap.

"What are you doing here?" Robby said, brow furrowed, when he caught sight of Jack. "Is everything okay, is—"

"Bzzt," Jack said, sitting down in the chair opposite Robby's and set the bag he was carrying down on the table between them. "Give me a sec, got to get something set up. Close your eyes."

"What?"

"Robby."

"Fine," Robby said, sounding like he did not think this was fine.

Jack emptied the bag of the box, the candles, the lighter, the napkins, the knife and forks, the plates. He arranged them; he unboxed the cake. There were four candles, and now he set one in precise alignment on each corner of the cake, which he'd custom-ordered from that really good bakery over in Lawrenceville. Not a sheet cake large enough to feed multitudes, the way Lena's had, but just the right size to be savoured by Robby himself and containing flavours that Jack knew Robby loved: honey and apricot and hazelnut.

He lit the candles, shoved the lighter into his jeans pocket, and said, "Okay, eyes open. Surprise, birthday boy."

Robby, clearly startled, looked from the cake to Jack and back to the cake. "How did you know that…"

Pleased, Jack tilted his chin up and murmured, "I have my ways."

"It's a cake," Robby said, sounding way too bewildered. You'd swear his parents had never bought him one back in the day.

"Yeah, it's a cake," Jack said, "because it's your birthday."

"But I'm not… but it's not…" There was a flush over the high points of Robby's cheekbones.

"Nah," Jack said, "let's not finish either of those sentences. Happy birthday, brother, blow out your candles, make a wish."

Robby did; and they shared the cake, which was fucking delicious; and sat there shooting the shit and drinking some more coffee until Jack's night shift well and truly caught up with him and he had to head home to bed; and somehow there on that porch, on that morning, a custom was formed. It would last through the pandemic, and Robby's break-up with Janey, and Robby becoming Chief, and every other high and low bout of sheer fucking weirdness in their lives: on Robby's birthday, Jack would show up with cake.

Sometimes it was in the morning, sometimes it was in the evening, and once it was at two in the afternoon, sitting on the low wall next to the ambulance bay with the reek of blood and antiseptic in their nostrils. But Jack always showed up, with cake and with no other acknowledgement of the day beyond, "Happy birthday, brother, blow out your candles, make a wish."

So maybe it shouldn't have been too much of a surprise when on one of those days, Robby made his wish and ate his cake and then sat there for a moment staring down at his hands before saying, "You, uh, you want to know what I wished for?"

Jack finished the last bite of his own piece and said, "Lay it on me."

"I wished for… What I want is…" Robby huffed out a sigh, rubbed at the nape of his neck, said, "Fuck me, why is this so hard?"

"Why is what?"